Human Nature

Author unravels the hard truth about human nature Elizabeth Benedict's fifth novel, "The Practice of Deceit," opens in a holding cell. Seated on the hard bench is Eric Lavender, a successful Scarsdale psychotherapist who is having a very bad day: His wife, a successful Scarsdale divorce lawyer, has charged him with molesting his 4-year-old stepdaughter. Eric's attorney has instructed him to collect his thoughts before his arraignment in the morning. It's making for a long night.

Here is a story with a message so universal, the tale has folkloric cousins on every habitable continent. Chances are you are familiar with a version of this story. It bears repeating though. A frog and a scorpion were at the shore of a lake. The scorpion was perturbed. He needed to get to the other side, but alas, he could not swim. He turned to the frog and said: "Hey, how about you do me a favor and let me climb on your back so that we can cross this lake together?" The frog gave the scorpion a dubious glance.

When accidents happen and people die, it is human nature to mourn their deaths and try to cast blame elsewhere. But several recent reminders suggest that many accidents are preventable and occur because people, also as part of human nature, make mistakes. Take the series of traffic accidents in Texas that killed 44 people last Sunday, a record for one day in that state. The victims included 12 infants and children crammed into a van that was hit after pulling into the path of a tractor-trailer, according to police.

I once kept track of all the promises I made in the course of a week. There were a lot of them! Of course, none of them were major promises of the order of, say, wedding vows, but I was still surprised at how many promises I made during one ordinary week. At home, I made promises about errands and cleaning, whether picking up a quart of milk or running a load of laundry. At work, I made promises about attending particular meetings and submitting reports on specific topics.

Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini was on that night. Left-right combinations were landing all over the challenger's face. The crowd was on its feet, cheering the champion on and yelling for a knockout. At last the Asian fell, and the referee began his count. The fight was over, but the challenger had not stirred. The crowd was too busy cheering to notice. It was 1986, and Duck Koo Kim lay dying in the middle of a Las Vegas boxing ring. Mancini was not charged. He had done his job and was paid well for it. Boxing is not a sport.

Look out, moviegoers. Disney may have just released another classic. "Iron Will" is the perfect treat for viewers young and old. Based on a true story, "Iron Will" is the tale of a young man's courageous entry in a sled race against nearly unbeatable odds - a race that could lead him to face his innermost fears and ultimately cost him his life. The movie stars young actor Mackenzie Astin, who plays the boy whose will of iron sends him on the journey of a lifetime. You'll travel with Will from start to finish as he struggles to survive the trial of nature and the evils of human nature.

Houston Astros general manager Tim Purpura had a great idea for gaining ground in the National League Central -- don't play any games. "The best thing we did this week is have (Monday) off because we picked up half a game," said Purpura, whose team was in the midst of a 10-game losing streak at the time he spoke. "It's hard to believe, but we did. That shows you where our division is." Outside of the Milwaukee Brewers' fast start, the NL Central has been an ugly, five-car pileup this season.

Heart leadings There is an old Unitarian saying, "We need not believe alike to love alike." In other words, even if we have different religious beliefs, we still can work together for peace, justice and the common good. Sadly, this is still a revolutionary idea to some, and it spills over into conversations about every aspect of life, even the family. When some people talk of "family values" what they are really talking about are just arbitrary rules that everyone's family has to look the same, love the same and believe the same things as their families, or else be told, "you're not a family."

That human beings are members of the Wild Kingdom is a notion that stretches back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. Aristotle's "man is a political animal" echoes down the centuries as both a social definition and a biological one. It took Charles Darwin, of course, to give that idea scientific credibility and, ever since, Drawin's professional descendants - geneticists, biochemists, animal behaviorists and others - have been building the case....

Saturday's question: Will the Tailhook scandal change how the military treats women? YES: 16 It's different than the way it was when I was in the military. Today it seems the women call the shots. ... Yes, I hope so, though it may be more from fear of being reported than any real change. ... It will result in some change. Officers will now act more prudently. ... I believe it already has, and this new consciousness is now spreading to the private industries. ... I hope women in the military will be treated with more respect.

When my 17-month-old son slapped me in the face, I knew it was time to search the Internet for some parenting help. And when Google pointed me to the "Terrible Twos Calculator," I just couldn't curb my curiosity enough to browse past it. But it didn't give me good news. In exactly 592 days, 0 hours, 38 minutes and 9 seconds, my son will begin to act like a compassionate, even-tempered, patient human being. So the calculator says. As all good moms do, I posted my troubles on Facebook.

Your turn. Now that the next-to-last trace of innocence has been stripped away officially from Major League Baseball's Steroid Era, it's time for you - the fan, the engaged, the devoted, the wallet with feet - to weigh in. Chances are, the news that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 and his admission Monday that he used steroids from 2001-03 didn't sway your opinion a great deal. You already had made up your mind to what level you would invest yourself in major-league pitchers and hitters.

Hampton Coliseum, known as the Mother Ship by fans of Phish and the Grateful Dead, is a legendary arena. Over 37 years, musicians from Neil Diamond to Jay-Z have raised the roof there. We offer a primer on how to get the most out of a show. Keep on top of concert news. Find out about events by visiting www.hampton.gov/coliseum. "We dedicate a lot of our resources to put the most up-to-date info on the Web site," says Coliseum director Joe Tsao. "It's always the first place to go."

Houston Astros general manager Tim Purpura had a great idea for gaining ground in the National League Central -- don't play any games. "The best thing we did this week is have (Monday) off because we picked up half a game," said Purpura, whose team was in the midst of a 10-game losing streak at the time he spoke. "It's hard to believe, but we did. That shows you where our division is." Outside of the Milwaukee Brewers' fast start, the NL Central has been an ugly, five-car pileup this season.

The horror sequel "28 Weeks Later" has the most arresting, gruesome and unnerving opening 11 minutes in movie-going memory. The follow-up to the "Britain Wiped Out by Rage-aholic Zombies" thriller "28 Days Later" briefly and economically introduces us to a small clutch of survivors, walled-up, "Night of the Living Dead"-style, in a remote farmhouse. Then bloody-eyed Brits pour in and slaughter everybody who isn't able to beat them off with a crow bar or outboard motor. "Weeks" is a frenetic killing machine -- illogical, telling in its grasp of human nature and utterly incapable of embracing the humanity it wants to show us. It's reduced the best horror franchise of the new millennium from a smart European dystopia to another Hollywood killing machine, brutally efficient and heartless.

Nora Ephron is 65, and so am I. And I cannot shake the feeling that she wrote her terrific new collection of essays just for me. Well, and for some of you, too. She feels bad about her neck, which began to betray her age at 43: "Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth," she confides in a sad-but-wise way. My neck's OK, but I feel bad about my waist, or to be more precise, the increasing lack thereof. She also hates her purse, and I'm not all that crazy about mine, either.

Jillian Richardson is hard at work as editor of Menchville High School's annual, The Crown. This is her first year on the yearbook staff, but she started at the top as student editor of the annual which this year has the theme of "a little bit different." She credits her selection to three years of accelerated English studies, including an advanced composition course she was taking when this year's staff was selected. She also has demonstrated leadership in Menchville's Key Club, a student organization backed by the Denbigh Kiwanis Club.

House swapping provides vacation opportunities for the adventurous -- and those with faith in human nature. Would you let complete strangers -- foreigners even -- stay in your house, bathe in your tub, sleep in your bed and drive your car for weeks in your absence? It was a question that begged reckoning for Gloucester Point residents Robert and Noel Priseler, who recently returned from England where they took part in a house swap. The couple stayed four weeks in the Nottingham home of Alexander and Christine Miller while the U.K. couple vacationed at the Priseler's waterfront house.

On April 7, Victor D. Hanson of the Hoover Institution and National Review addressed a large and receptive audience at Christopher Newport University. His topic was titled "War in a Classical Context," but he spent most of his time discussing our own era. His argument proceeded from an interesting point of view and included many interesting points. And yet I was left uneasy. Allow me some random reflections on what he had to say. Hanson's premise was based on the well-known dictum that only the dead have seen the end of war. From this he seemed to proceed to the conclusion that human nature is intrinsically violent, that this quality necessarily issues forth in that organized violence we term war, and that an intelligent policy a)